


Repairs

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For hc-bingo prompt 'broken bones'.  </p>
<p>I'm sitting her with my grievously-ill14 year old cat on my lap, killing time before I take him to the vet to have him put to sleep. I need some hc fluff, okay?  I have so many memories of writing with him on my lap like this, my dissertation, my conference papers, course proposals....it seems a fitting one last time. </p>
<p>May be slightly OOC, but, eh, ask me if I care. Spoiler: I do not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repairs

Ratchet gave that exhausted sigh, clogged with stress, that came at the end of every post-battle medibay rush, letting himself rest, just for a moment, on the exam slab, looking around the empty bay. It wasn’t perfectly clean, but night shift could handle the rest of it. Right now, he could feel the exhaustion seeping into his systems. 

“Too damn old for this,” he muttered, pushing himself back up to his feet. Even with the war over, young idiots were still out there determined to get themselves hurt, expecting, with an almost childlike faith, that he’d be able to put them back together.

He could, most of the times. But the few times he couldn’t always weighed on him, especially in moments like this.

And he didn’t want that weight, so he thrust it off, rising, grabbing a datapad to make a few follow up notes for the night shift, to check on those in regen, change the pump on the centrifuge, all the little monitoring tasks of care. 

And he was done, he thought, moving toward the medibay door with steps that felt like moving through wet concrete, dimming the lights to nightcycle.  He couldn’t even remember everyone he’d treated today—they all ran together in a blur of energon and twisted metal. 

Ratchet stopped, abruptly, before his tired mind even registered what his optics had caught—a lump of metal on the far floor. 

He muttered, and then swore, as he approached.  Figured. “Drift.”

“Mmmmuh?” A bleary blink of blue optics in the half-darkness, from the mech curled on his side.

“The frag are you doing here?”

Drift’s face scrunched up, as though the question was a puzzle he had to crack with pressure. “…recharging?” It sounded more like a guess than a wisecrack. 

“You have quarters for that.” As in not the floor of Ratchet’s medibay. 

Drift nodded, pushing up with one hand to sit up, as though that was some profound wisdom. Then he winced, and said, “Oh. Also. I’m injured.”

If a few million years hadn’t worn away Ratchet’s ability to facepalm, he was pretty he’d break his nasal plating with this one.  “Should have figured.” Drift and injury went together like Rodimus and ego.  He snapped his fingers. “Let’s see.”  So much for being done for the night.

Drift managed to look sheepish as he held out his right arm, the one he’d been curled up on. The main endoskeletal struts were snapped halfway down the forearm, leaving the hand dangling, wires bulging and useless.

Ratchet almost asked how the frag Drift had managed to do that, but then he realized…he probably didn’t want to know. 

Drift grimaced. “Sorry? I could come back tomorrow?”

Right. As tempting as it was, he knew he couldn’t get a night’s recharge knowing there was an injured mech on the ship. Even Drift.  Especially Drift. 

“Come on,” Ratchet said, brusquely. That was the answer to that question, at any rate, and he hauled Drift up by his good arm.  He’d been made before the war: back when medics had heavy frames and servos, apparently in anticipation of dealing with injured idiots.  So Drift’s weight wasn’t a problem, and besides, Ratchet had his frustration to keep him going, even though he couldn’t put it into words. Most mechs asked for help. Drift…didn’t want to be a bother so he fell asleep—half passed out from energon loss, it looked like—on the medibay floor. 

He grunted, lowering Drift to the slab he’d rested on briefly a few minutes ago, reaching without needing to look for the mediscanner.  The break was bad, a spiral, something that had twisted Drift’s arm, wrenching it back and around.

“What?” Drift said, trying to peer over the top of the scanner. “It’s just a break. You can, you know, weld it. It’ll be fine.”

“’It’ll be fine,’” Ratchet mimicked. “If you don’t mind, I’ll handle the repairs.” 

“…it’s not fine?”

Surprise, Drift: you’re not invincible, Ratchet thought, sourly. “It will be.  I need to fabricate a replacement.”

“But that takes time.”  Like that was a reasonable protest.

“Yes,” Ratchet said, blandly, moving to take measurements. Custom fabs took time, the right alloys, the right shapes, the right components. 

Drift moved his arm back, cradling it in his other hand, trying to ignore the loose flop of the broken hand dangling below. “What am I supposed to do? I need this hand. What if we get attacked again? How will I--?”

Ratchet rolled his optics, mostly for show. He knew how it would kill Drift not to be able to fight. “You’ll be fine.”  He looked at him pointedly. “You always are.”

Drift tried a smile, in response at the almost-maybe-kinda-sorta compliment, but it fizzled. 

Ratchet finished his measurements, tapping them into a datapad as he crossed over to the fabricator.  He checked the fab queue: two days. He looked back at Drift, still clutching his injured arm, optics liquid with worry.  Drift hated being helpless in his way almost as much as Ratchet hated it himself.  Ratchet gave a vexed grunt—at himself—and scrolled up the queue.  Nothing that urgent: Pipes would be in regen for days, and Trailcutter didn’t need that new tire rim quite that badly.  He scowled at his reflection on the screen as he overrode the queue order, inserting Drift’s radial and ulnar struts at the top of the list.  It pinged, accepting the new order, and shuffling the components to start batching.

“Four cycles,” he said, turning back to Drift. “If you can wait that long.”

He could feel Drift’s optics on him as he bent down and began stripping away the broken components, laying the hand aside to salvage: a few bits of armor dented and scored through the enamel, but usable. Drift studied him: his shoulders, his face, measuring him, and somehow reading in the tilt of his chevron or the flat of his mouth, what he’d done.  “…I can wait,” Drift said, meekly.

“You _will_ wait,” Ratchet corrected, capping the wires, pulling the broken struts from their sockets, tossing them in the recycling pan.  “Not giving up my recharge cycle for nothing.”

Drift flinched, less from the pain of the way he jerked the radial strut from the socket, than from Ratchet’s words, trying to pull his hand back.“Y-you can go. I mean, it can wait till morning.”

Ratchet squeezed the elbow, hard. “I know I can go, Drift. My fraggin’ medibay.” He also knew it could wait till morning. He had a mighty fine grasp on the obvious, all around. And a great deal more common sense than someone like Drift.

“Yeah. Uh. I’m…sorry?” A wavering hesitation in his voice, trying not to offend Ratchet.  And it was that Ratchet couldn’t take: it was almost too easy, almost like taking advantage of Drift to push at him when he was here, and injured, and as close to scared as he came. Drift didn’t fear death or injury or maiming or pain—in all of this he hadn’t said a word about it hurting—just being helpless, disabled. 

Ratchet mumbled something, tucking the wires up into the elbow chamber until the fabrication was ready, then turned, boosting himself onto the slab beside Drift.  The swordsmech turned, puzzled, moving to ease off the slab, till Ratchet caught him by his good arm, hauling him back, pulling the red spaulders back against his chassis.  Drift was rigid, for a long moment, and Ratchet could just imagine the confusion on his face. 

“What?” Ratchet said, worming down on the slab, slinging one arm over Drift’s chassis, giving a long, tired sigh, feeling Drift’s weight and EM field like a warm blanket against him. “Got four cycles to kill.”

Drift relaxed, in stages going limp against Ratchet’s chassis, his one good hand moving up, tentatively lacing itself in Ratchet’s. 


End file.
